This is my holy text. It’s the same copy I read in 11th-grade English class. I was one of two black kids in my entire high school, and reading Their Eyes Were Watching God was the first time I’d felt deeply seen. It’s a book about a black woman’s journey to self-revelation and love, and it made me think it was possible, in some world, some years down the road, that I would be able to write my own journey of self-discovery and love.
When I was 16 and a half, the text was all about the romance, you know, all about the love, but every time I returned to it, there were different layers. I realized later that there were feminist layers, racial layers, the way she’s growing into becoming a writer, the way she invented her own language sometimes, writing the way her people spoke.
It’s been with me on so many levels. As a trans woman, the disclosure piece, in telling your story to someone you care about, someone you hope to have a relationship with, is fraught with all kinds of anxiety and fear and potential loss. So when I wrote my first book, Redefining Realness, I stole Hurston’s structure, which opens up in present-day with a woman telling her story to someone she deeply cares about.
I actually began my wedding vows to Aaron with words from this book: “He looked like the love thoughts of women.” When I was younger, I was lovesick even though I had no experience with romance or anything, but the first time I read these words, I remember saying to myself, “Oh my god, I want somebody who looks like the love thoughts of women!”
It’s the book that has been on every single bookshelf I’ve ever had since the 11th grade. Now, it’s on the desk where I write. It’s the book that I turn to.
~ Janet Mock, author and activist, New York, NY